1 October 2005
Music

Filed under Media

When someone asks me for my musical tastes, I get caught like a deer in headlights. I’m sure this will come off as haughty, but it’s really tough to explain how varied and rich my musical tastes are in the normal course of a conversation – I think I could give a three hour lecture on the subject and still only scratch the surface. Usually, I give the most terrible of cop-out answers: “Everything”. Which is, more or less, true. I really will listen to anything once, and given how cheap storage is, I have a hard drive full of music both mainstream and unique. If I could save only one thing in a fire, this music drive would be it.

But, in reality, “Everything” is just a way to avoid what would happen if I rattled off my favorite artists: blank-stare central. See: I pretty much like everything, provided that the “everything” in question hasn’t been played on the radio in the past 5 years. Sometimes, this means it’s old (as is the case with the Blues, Jazz, and Folk I like), most times, it’s just too obscure or too niche to make it to a big-market radio station. Classical music and Classic Rock are the only things that don’t fit this profile.

I’m (like a segment of the population that’s fortunately growing) driven away from the Top-40 mega-pop stations with the fake artists that lip synch on SNL and have fan clubs and full-page pullouts in Tiger Beat. That would be a good way to describe my musical tastes: I like bands that don’t have fan clubs. I need to remember that for next time.

I could say I’m repulsed by pop music because it’s about the money and being famous, but some of the music I like (U2, Queen, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles) has transcended the “art” category into money-making land. Most of the music I like though, especially Jazz, wasn’t really about making money. I almost through Classical in there, but, in a sense, Classical music is all about making money: the most prolific composers were the ones who were able to make their craft artistic as fast as possible and sell it to the highest bidder. Hmm, now that I think about that, I’d like to investigate the rise and fall of classical composers.

There are some nights when I love to throw on a Bernard Herrmann score, or a Miles Davis LP, or Frank Sinatra, or a hundred other artists that lived (and in many cases died) before my time. Where does this strong connection to the past come from? I don’t know, but I love it.

Again, I really do like everything. I’ve got tons of current albums. But the music I *really* like, the CD’s that find their way into my playlists time and time again, are ones most people haven’t heard of.

And that’s just the way I like it.

 ::  Adam